Late afternoon boredom.

Adrian’s weekend mornings begin with Youtube movies early in the morning, before Eric and I get up. Late morning he is usually happy building Legos. During the day maybe we run errands or there’s something else going on around the house – and of course there are always Legos.

In the afternoon he starts running out of energy and ideas, and so do we. That’s when the boredom sets in. And he cannot come up with anything he wants to do.

In the evening things get easier again. There’s a bit of iPad time, then dinner, a bath, and before you know it, it’s bedtime already.

Sometimes pyjama boy wears pyjamas to preschool.
Sometimes pyjama boy gets tired on the way home.

He can still squat like a child

This month was one long wait for Adrian’s birthday party. I even made a countdown calendar for him because I got tired of all the times he asked me if it was his birthday yet.

A birthday party sounded great in theory. But in practice he was mostly just interested in the presents and the cake and ice cream. Playing with his friends – not so much. He really struggled with the idea that not only he should have fun (and start building the Lego sets he got as presents) but the others should have fun as well, and he needed to play with them.

To be honest a few of the guests also had trouble understanding that they were not the centre of the party and that maybe Adrian deserved more attention than they. There was a lot of need for conflict resolution… Well, nobody left in tears, so I guess it was a reasonably successful party.

Interestingly he again only invited girls to his party. He plays with boy toys, and he plays with both boys and girls at preschool, but he likes girls better.

Legos continue to occupy his attention almost all the time. He builds and rebuilds his Lego sets. He asks when we can buy more Legos. He watches Lego speed build videos on Youtube. Half the living room is filled with crates of Lego pieces, boxes with Lego sets, trays and bowls with pieces of sets in progress, and finished constructions.

Mostly he prefers to follow instructions, and there seems to be no limit to how large and complicated sets he can build. The thing he most wanted to get for his birthday was a large Lego Chima set, Maula’s Ice Mammoth Stomper, which is aimed at ages 8 to 14 and consists of 600+ pieces. He finished it in two afternoons and a morning. Which is kind of impressive but also means that he runs out of things to build and quickly wants more…

He got Ingrid’s permission to rebuild one of her old Lego Friends sets but didn’t find those very interesting. He gave up on the instructions and instead built little robots from the pink, white and leaf-green Lego Friends pieces.

Generally most things turn into (a) vehicles, especially flying ones, with weapons, or (b) robots with weapons. That fly.

For his birthday we also gave him a little wallet and the promise of a weekly allowance of 20 kr. Just like Ingrid at that age he is attracted to all sorts of cheap plastic doodads, and I feel like I am always saying no to him when we’re out doing grocery shopping etc. Now he gets money that he can spend on junk that is important to him but, well, junk to me.

Adrian remains curious and interested in the world around him, in a way that Ingrid has never been. Where does our garbage go? Which was the first boat to sail on the seas? Who lives in that house?

He is no longer angry or whiny all the time. Or maybe I’ve just gotten used to it. I think consistent, earlier bedtimes helped. I’m pretty sure that most mornings he is in a better mood than he used to be.

He still gets angry as soon as he is asked to do something he doesn’t want, or when we say no when he asks us to do things for him – almost every single time. Especially if it involves the end of something fun, e.g. putting away the iPad in the evening, or going to bed – or if it involves any kind of work. Even the smallest request, such as asking him to put away the toy he’s left on the kitchen table, or throw away his apricot pits, or get his own glass of water, leads to an explosion of yelling and screaming that we are the stupidest in the world, and threats of hitting us. There’s no ramp-up, he goes straight from zero to yelling. Sometimes he still does what he is asked; other times he just stomps away and flat out refuses.

I’m approaching this like I would approach a painful process at work: “If it hurts, do it more often.” He needs more practice in helping out, being asked to help, cleaning up after himself etc. It’ll get worse before it gets better, but it needs to be done before he grows into a lazy, entitled brat.

Adrian and I made kladdkaka for his birthday. It’s a kind of Swedish chocolate mud cake and it’s his favourite kind of cake.

Adrian’s new shoes for this autumn. Size 29! Beloved but not lovingly cared for…

Adrian’s preschool had a “bulb planting festival”. We planted bulbs. And ate soup.

This is one of my few splurges: spending silly amounts of money almost daily on the best fresh, seasonal fruit I can find. When we get home in the afternoon, the kids and I eat fruit until it’s almost coming out of our ears. It starts with all kinds of berries during early summer. Those were followed by peaches and nectarines, and now we’ve come to apricots and plums.